


remember me as a time of day

by thatsformetoknow



Series: portfolio [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, Getting Together, I hope, Like, M/M, This is really fucking soft, and then suddenly four am is lance, its quite flowy and pretty, shiro and lances meetings at four am, shiro starts wandering at four am, so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 05:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17912549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsformetoknow/pseuds/thatsformetoknow
Summary: Shiro and Lance’s four a.ms start intertwining more after that. They find each other, one way or another.It starts out as wandering, it always starts out as wandering. Then they’ll fall into step next to one another and they’ll wander together. They never exchange a greeting or a goodbye, they never exchange as much as an utterance to one another, but it’s an understanding that they have.They don’t need to.They walk and they walk, and sometimes they stop and they look. Shiro looks softly at Lance and Lance looks softly back and lips curl into a smile and then they walk again.It’s almost every night now, almost every four a.m and four a.m doesn’t really feel like four a.m unless Shiro has the soft pad of footsteps beside him, soft breathing and soft smiles.Four a.m doesn't really feel like four a.m without Lance.





	remember me as a time of day

There is no linear sense of time in space. That is one of the first things that Shiro realises, when they’ve been on the castle ship for a while. They wake up at certain times and they eat their meals accordingly, and they go to bed after an amount has passed, yes. 

But they’re too far away from any sort of sun for there to ever be any light. They’re too far away to ever know if the sun would be setting or rising or what sort of time it _really_ is. Just their systems that tell them. Time is relative to them and them alone when they’re floating through space. Just for them.

Shiro thinks that that might have something to do with his insomnia, that he can tell himself that he doesn’t know what time it is, not really. That the sun has not risen and it has not set and he cannot sleep, and it has nothing to do with the nightmares. He just wants to see a sunset again, it’s been so long. 

They’ve stopped on planets and they’ve had glimpses of the weather and it’s wonderful, it’s so, so wonderful. But they’re back, they’re always back and it’s dark and the light is artificial.

Maybe that’s why he can’t sleep. Maybe that’s why he likes the night. It’s dark and there are no artificial lights, it just… is. 

It’s quiet and Shiro doesn’t owe anything to anyone. He doesn’t train at night when he can’t sleep, like he knows Keith does. He doesn’t go and work on something like he knows Pidge would. He doesn’t go for a snack like Hunk, and he doesn’t go for a swim like Lance has been known to.

He just wanders… 

Aimlessly, absolutely aimlessly but it’s what he’s living for, these days. He’ll gladly skimp on sleep if it means he can just exist. Even for a moment, just exist here like this, just walking, thoughts not clouding his mind, just free and calm. He can breathe again. Everything is quiet and everything is still, and Shiro is unapologetically thankful.

He changes his routes every now and again, stopping by wherever he manages to end up, he doesn’t have a plan, he just walks. It’s always a sort of… four a.m. 

Shiro doesn’t know what the time is, there’s a clock in his room but he supposes it wouldn’t matter anyway. It’s only there so that their little brains can make sense of things. Time isn’t real, things just exist. Shiro just exists. 

And it feels like four a.m. 

Four a.m has become a feeling, not a time. It’s not a time of day it’s a state of mind. It’s Shiro, walking, breathing, just… being. Four a.m is quickly becoming Shiro’s escape, his favourite part of the day. Shiro is living for his four a.ms, where he can just forget. Stop being the leader for once, the tortured Black Paladin trying to save the world with a bunch of teenagers and some aliens.

He’s Takashi. He just is. He feels like he’s seventeen. On the brink of adulthood but not quite tipped over the edge, like he’s got some responsibility but he’s forgiven, always forgiven for his mistakes. 

Shiro is not forgiven. Forgiven by his friends but absolutely never by himself.

He finds Lance like that one night and at first he tenses. These are _his_ four a.ms. They’re his solace and his escape and nothing from real life should taint them.

But Lance could never taint anything if he tried.

It was the observation deck. Shiro had barely just clocked that Lance had an affinity for it, sometimes venturing there around seven pm-ish after food and before bed. Just looking out at the stars, and Shiro has never disturbed him. 

He’s here now, at four a.m. He’s standing, just standing. Looking, just looking, and he looks sad and he looks wistful and he looks beautiful all at once.

Shiro doesn’t say anything to him, he just stands beside him for a little while and they look together.

Lance glances at Shiro and Shiro glances at Lance and they share the smallest of understanding smiles and maybe Lance has his own four a.ms and maybe he wouldn’t mind sharing this one with Shiro the way that Shiro wouldn’t mind sharing this one with Lance.

It’s a little while before Lance moves, he turns to go, and then he’s gone. Shiro doesn’t look after him, he doesn’t need to. 

He looks for a little while longer before continuing his wandering, and then he falls into bed, heavy and tired and light and free all at once. 

Shiro and Lance’s four a.ms start intertwining more after that. They find each other, one way or another.

It starts out as wandering, it always starts out as wandering. Then they’ll fall into step next to one another and they’ll wander together. They never exchange a greeting or a goodbye, they never exchange as much as an utterance to one another, but it’s an understanding that they have. 

They don’t need to.

They walk and they walk, and sometimes they stop and they look. Shiro looks softly at Lance and Lance looks softly back and lips curl into a smile and then they walk again.

It’s almost every night now, almost every four a.m and four a.m doesn’t really feel like four a.m unless Shiro has the soft pad of footsteps beside him, soft breathing and soft smiles. 

It’s completely by accident that Lance takes Shiro’s hand. He turns to go and Shiro isn’t looking, so Lance gently slides his fingers around his wrist, gently pulling him and their hands just naturally slide together, fingers lacing and Shiro doesn’t look. Lance doesn’t look. They don’t need to. Neither of them drop the hold until Shiro is dropping Lance off at his room and wandering back to his own.

They don’t stop holding each other after that. 

Lance smiles when Shiro finds him, bright and warm and soft, he’s oh so soft. Sometimes he slips their hands together first and sometimes Shiro does, and sometimes it’s loose, and sometimes it’s interlocked, and sometimes there are strokes of thumb pads over skin. 

Sometimes they’ll stop and Lance leans against him and Shiro wraps his arm around him. That’s the only thing he’ll drop his hand for these days, to hold Lance close in his arms and he can’t possibly even comprehend when this happened, how this happened.

Sometimes they’ll sit. Sometimes they sit on the observation deck and look out at the stars and Lance sits pressed up against Shiro and Shiro holds him close, and sometimes Lance drops off to sleep, forehead resting on Shiro’s shoulder and that’s when Shiro scoops him up and carries him to his room, tucking him into bed, gently brushing his hair from his face and his chest feels so… 

He hasn’t felt like this in a long time and the only thing that he knows is that he never wants it to stop. Lance frowns in his sleep as Shiro let’s him go and Shiro lets out a small shaky breath. 

He knows what this is, but he could never say it outloud. Not even to himself. Not yet.

Shiro seeks him out. Every night. Every four a.m. He needs Lance beside him, needs to feel his fingers laced with his own, to watch the light reflected in his eyes as they look out at the stars. To just have him there, feel him there.

They never talk about it, but they keep finding one another, keep walking and looking and sitting and holding and just being, and Shiro can barely remember when four a.m wasn’t Lance.

Four a.m will never not be Lance, again.

When Shiro kisses Lance for the first time he tells himself that it’s completely by accident, but he knows that it completely isn’t. 

They’re standing, they’ve come to a natural stop in their walk and they’re at the observation deck again, Lance always seems to draw them there, always wants to look out at the stars and Shiro knows it grounds him because it does the same for him.

Lance is looking out and Shiro is looking at Lance and it’s been that way for a while now. Lance turns to Shiro with a gentle smile on his lips and Shiro can’t not. He can’t find it in himself to not kiss Lance, he’s never needed anything more.

He brushes a lock of hair behind his ear, cupping his face and Lance meets him halfway. There is no surprise and there is no shock, they both completely melt against one another because this has been coming the whole time, this has always been coming and they were always going to end up right here.

They don’t say anything when they pull away, just smiling softly at each other. Lance brushes his lips over each of Shiro’s cheeks, and over his eyelids and then he bites his lip. Shiro gently tugs it from between his teeth with his thumb and he kisses him again. 

Shiro drops Lance off at his room a little while after that, and their fingers are laced and there are more kisses, gentle, feather light. 

Lance doesn’t let go when Shiro makes to pull away, he looks at him more tentatively than he ever has before, but he pulls Shiro inside his room and the door slides closed behind them.

Lance holds him and he holds Lance and Shiro sleeps better than he has for as long as he can remember. Since he left Earth. 

He’s holding Lance so gently but he never wants to let go. Lance is nestled in his arms like he belongs there and he does, oh he does. 

Shiro tilts his head as Lance does and there’s more gentle brushing of lips, soft presses and smiles.

They don’t say anything. They don’t need to, because it’s four a.m and four a.m will never not be this, right here. Four a.m will never not be Lance.

**Author's Note:**

> fdhfdjfdjfd sorry theres this instrumental song called remember me as a time of day ??? and my brain was like hELLO. so i absolutely had to get this out and i think,,, it turned out pretty much how i envisioned so !!!!
> 
> comments are greatly appreciated !!


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